From the pool of blood, a copy of her appeared beside Ronnie, who swung her arm and her palm transformed into a long sword blade. He dodged several blows and dashed in a frontal attack.

“What’s he up to?” Illyseh grimaced.

Ronnie picked up Airemilme’s sword midway and came within arm’s length of her and threw it forward, when she hit back with her own blade, he was close enough from her to grab her right arm, lock his left leg under her left armpit, pull her forward toward him and in time to fall, pinch her head under the knee of his free leg catching her in a leg lock that eventually resulted in her death.

Airemilme rose in the same place, her paired blades transformed into a two-handed sword, with which she made a top-down chopping blow. Ronnie used ‘Furious Rhythm’, stepped to her side in a U-turn, and then, using the flying scissors technique, grabbed her neck with his legs in a leap and fell to the ground, breaking her cervical vertebrae. She did not die, convulsing, grabbing her tongue with her mouth. The Stechkin pistol finished what he started.

Last time.

Airemilme rose from the pool of her own blood. Anger and rage swept over her face. A fiery aura formed around her, its flames like whips, destroying everything within ten yards. Ronnie ran away just in time, took out a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it at her. She squinted her eyes and tossed the bursting projectile aside. The fired magazine of nine-millimeter bullets only managed to wound her in the stomach, and then only once. Airemilme screamed and opened a portal above her head, fireballs shooting out of it. Ronnie rushed back, grabbed his rifle on the way, jumped aside, and fired at random. The bullet missed Airemilme’s head by an inch. She gasped in fright, her eyes widening. He pulled the trigger again, but before the bullet could reach its target, his body caught fire. Ronnie screamed in pain, and a dozen seconds later, he stopped breathing. Airemilme lost her left leg, but she did not die. She healed the wounds and recovered the lost a limb by drawing blood from her own body.

He revived and looked at the bridge, at the pile of bodies, at the scattered weapons. The smell of rot, of blood, was nauseating. Nearby stood Illyseh, who was already giving a shouting introduction. Ronnie dropped to his knees, unable to stand, repeating the same word: “Shit.” His hearing did not recognize the speech, his eyes were all washed out. The rifle on his back felt like it weighed twenty pounds.

Suddenly a scene flashed through Ronnie’s mind in which Airemilme threw her sword in a boomerang. He dodged it, fired, and dodged it again. Thirty seconds later, that was what happened. Ronnie’s body moved by itself, as if he had rehearsed this development many thousands of times. Before he had time to think about what was happening, he ran fifty yards away, dodging another volley of fireballs and aiming and firing. Again, both were killed.

The rebirths brought Ronnie uncontrollable pain and torment. Hundreds of his and Airemilme’s dead bodies covered most of the surface of the bridge. With each defeat, he plunged deeper and deeper into the vat of madness. Illyseh tried to bring his partner up to speed as soon as he rose from the dead, but the more he tried to explain something, the more convinced he became Ronnie heard nothing or did not perceive speech at all; his fighting style also changed to melee. He fought with a sword, grappled, strangled, and broke her arms, legs, and neck. In addition, over time, he learned how to dodge long-range magical attacks, such as fireballs and rays. This was no longer a fight between two restrained warriors, but between two madmen, ready to do anything to win.

Something is going on with him, but I can’t figure out what.

After the one hundred and tenth revival, a few minutes of future combat flashed through Ronnie’s mind, as if he could sense what was about to happen, and his body moved on its own, dodging on its own. Airemilme also adapted to her opponent’s fighting style, trying to surprise him with a new trump card up her sleeve. In some places, the dead bodies lay in a small pile, the blood of both mixed up, forming purple puddles.

For the one hundred and fiftieth time, the future battle raced through Ronnie’s mind, right up to its outcome. He smiled as Airemilme threw a few swords boomerangs. It was as expected. He had no problem dodging her, firing his pistol at her several times, but she picked up his mangled dead body and defend herself with it. Ronnie lifted his sword from her corpse and threw it forward and equipped his Barrett, and took aim and fired. Airemilme jumped to the side, used a portal and summoned a boulder in front of her. The .50 BMG bullet lodged in the rock, which flew at Ronnie. He ran to safety beforehand. It amazed Illyseh at how he was getting better and better at fighting each round, not remembering what had happened to him before.

Of course, he thought. She’s training his muscle memory on some insane level.

After about the two hundredth death, Ronnie’s insanity faded into the background, and cold calculation came back to the fore. The brain was adjusting to the new abilities. New fights dragged on for dozens of minutes. When one won two in a row, the other, balancing on the edge, stepped up the attacks and used more and more tricks to win. The tactic of the next hour was to get more of the trump cards out of the opponent.

“It’s time to get it over with,” Ronnie said. “I’m reaching my limit.”

He took the adrenaline syringe out of his backpack, jammed the contents into his thigh, and pulled out his amulet and examined it from all sides again. So foreign and so familiar. A childhood memory flashed through his mind. He was on a virtual shooting range with his father. Both were holding old Mosin rifles with open sights, and dummies at 300, 400, and 500 yards ahead. Tyriel fired three shots, expertly sliding the bolt.

Nine, nine, ten, said the AI.

“Now it’s your turn.”

Blake took a few deep breaths and felt his heartbeat pumping blood throughout his body. He exhaled and froze. Thump, pause, thump, pause. Three shots followed.

Nine, ten, ten.

“Wow,” Tyriel said. “Your eyes see better than anyone else’s. Your finger doesn’t waver when you shoot, and your heart has chosen the weapon. Good.”

Blake nodded.

An outstanding warrior is growing in you, son. With your ambition and desire to win, you already surpass many of my privates at seven. I wonder what will happen to you next.

Ronnie hid the amulet back under his clothes, took three deep breaths, used ‘Furious Rhythm’, pointed the rifle toward the wall, and fired. Airemilme shifted her eyebrows and the last thing she saw was a ricocheting bullet flying straight into her eye. Her head burst inside her helmet like a balloon, bloody tears streaming from her eye holes. Ronnie wasted no time; he pulled out two C4 explosives and set them fifty meters in front of him, peering at the ghastly bloody rebirth.

The wyverns roared and spewed flames. A rattling bell tolled through the neighborhood. Following it, the first lightning flashed through the gray clouds. The whirlwinds swirled around and on the bridge. Airemilme rushed forward on the crowbar and immediately blew up on C4. In the same second, the smoke cleared. The explosion seemed silent. The fierce gusts of wind drowned out any sound, any scream.

Ronnie looked at the castle and noticed several flags fluttering in their death throes. A few had broken off and flown into the all-consuming void. Wind speeds of at least 20 m/s, shit. He could barely move. The dust rose, making it hard to see.

To Ronnie’s mind came a picture of the next battle, where he killed Airemilme, losing several of his limbs. Well, considering my past deaths, that’s not that bad. However, things did not go according to plan from the start. Airemilme flapped her black, enormous wings and soared sixty yards into the air. The black rods detached from her frail body and hovered over her head like giant arrows. Her eyes were calm, steady, and eager to kill. She looked as if she were an executioner on her thousandth anniversary execution. It did not take long for the attack to come down. Ronnie ducked at the very last moment; he knew: with such a strong wind; he lived as long as ‘Furious Rhythm’ worked.

Airemilme continued the onslaught and brought a meteorite down on Ronnie. He fired a precise shot from the Barrett before jumping aside, but the new and unknown magical stone armor absorbed the bullet. When it landed, leaving a crater on the bridge and a bloody mess of bodies, waves of blood swirled around her in a dance, reminiscent of the shape of a lotus whose petals blossom and open. Airemilme bent into a fetal position and recited the incantation, “Surofoim juntzposoro, oushevmekchi...” Ronnie did not wait for her to finish and shot. The bullet ricocheted off. He fired the entire magazine, but did no damage. The clones that rose from the blood and disappeared repelled the fragmentation grenades.

“Any idea how I can get her?” Ronnie asked, running up to Illyseh and trying to outshout the wind.

“You can’t! Only magic of the same level or higher can defeat powerful magic! Your weapon is useless right now.”

Airemilme’s voice fell silent, and two gigantic monsters descended from the heavens. One was a six-winged monster with an enormous eye in the center, and the other had wheels full of eyes instead of arms, legs, and body. The same ones that were on the painting in the cave.

The first creature fired a thin beam of water out of its eye and nearly cut Ronnie in half. He retaliated with a shot of about 54 inches’ deviation, but he could not catch the trajectory of the bullet. Shooting 500-600 yards into the sky is not a good idea.

“Stuse zu bon!” Airemilme pronounced a new spell.

Blood rose from the ground and transformed into needles, and shot at Ronnie. He jumped behind a boulder and defend himself from the attack and gather a few bodies into a small pile and set them on fire. Black smoke went up.

“Notrofde siiv ez nos.”

This time, ten blood clones appeared and stood in protective racks next to Airemilme and did not move.

The more we killed each other, the stronger she became. Well, what else could it be?

She continued to summon an army around her and use the same attack spell. Ronnie dodged needles, a water ray, and then a new attack was added - fire meteorites released by a creature with many rings, now burning with red flame. He retreated farther and farther away, looking back. Then he cursed and sprinted as fast as he could toward the platform at the end of the bridge. When the ‘Furious Rhythm’ was over, a beam of water chopped off his legs and a red-hot cobblestone fell on his head.

Ronnie respawned in the same spot a minute later and sprinted onward without a backward glance. The wyverns turned their heads in his direction, staring at the fugitive. Boulders exploded one by one. More and more craters and gaps appeared on the cobblestone road, more and more of them pierced by mighty attacks. When he reached nearly the edge of the bridge, he turned back to see Airemilme rising and heading after him. The army of bloody spears paced around her. When they reached the black puffs of smoke, Ronnie stopped, estimated in his head the distance to the object - 700 yards, the wind direction was three o’clock, about 23 m/s - and calculated, the result of which showed a deviation of 138 inches vertically and 103 inches horizontally. The hardest shot of my life. His index finger squeezed the trigger. The wind immediately blew the smoke from the compensator away, and the sound dissipated into the noise of the whirlwinds.

Airemilme stopped on the spot. Ronnie saw her body fly off to the side and crash into the stone wall. The blood clones did not disperse, the monsters in the sky did not disappear. He cursed and gasped and tried to gather his thoughts, but not a couple of seconds later a water beam sliced him in half and a fiery meteorite left his corpse in an ash and bloody mess.

“Only a miracle will save him,” Illyseh said.

Airemilme rose and continued forward, staggering. Three hundred yards away, her paired blades flashed purple, her magical black wings lifting her into the air. She pirouetted in the air, folded her swords. They transformed into a long tournament spear with a fire-breathing dragon head at the guard, whose rough tongue was the point.

Ronnie rose from the pool of his own blood and saw the six-winged creature release a water beam without waiting a second, the other monster dropped the meteorite at the same moment, and Airemilme and her clones raced toward him at insane speed, leaving behind a small area of rarefaction. The color of her aura changed to black and purple.

Ronnie took his shot, aiming for the head, all hope resting on the .50 BMG, for it was now up to it to decide who would live and who would die. Time stood still for a second, and the heartbeats of the opponents could be heard. Then all the attacks collided at once at the point where Ronnie was standing. There was an explosion. Illyseh turned and cursed and heard a familiar phrase echoing around. This time he understood the meaning:

“Ne-sura-zo, ez-tro-de-boro fo nodrnom.”

Ascend o the great souls.

He turned to where Ronnie’s body, torn apart by the crushing attacks, should have been lying, but saw him looking at his own palm and protected by a translucent blue nebula-like orb, within which little stars flickered. Airemilme jumped back and turned the spear into two paired swords and prepared for another dash.

Illyseh looked around. The water rings in the clouds were gone.

“Defrodezom, gostar-an-fkln, tostrpandrock.”

Blend with the darkness in the name of purification.

A black vortex appeared in the clouds. It grew to colossal proportions, emitting an ominous, bassy howl. The wyverns flapped their wings and dashed upward, trying to quell the powerful spell. A huge volcanic dragon rose from behind the fortress walls and released a magma beam into the very center of the black maelstrom. The clouds glowed, turning red. There was a sound of thunder. Lightning struck the bridge and castle, nearly destroying Airemilme.

“Holy Christ,” Illyseh muttered with trembling lips.

The vortex sucked both creatures, along with the wyverns, in, and the dragon roared and closed its front limbs and cast a spell:

“Equilos gostar-an-fkln.”

Suppression of Darkness.

An unnatural white light appeared in its paws, and pentagrams appeared in the sky that sealed the powerful spell. The dragon howled one last time and flew away behind the glowing clouds.

Ronnie stretched out his hand and thrust his palm away. The protective magic followed his movement. He tried to cluster the orb into a sphere at the magic point. Airemilme braced herself for another attack. The black-red waves that surrounded her on all sides whipped all around, destroying the base and protective walls of the bridge. Instantly, they grouped together and joined at the tip of Airemilme’s weapon.

“Oridof go zom!”

Interdimensional leap!

The attack went hollow as Ronnie figured out how to use the magic he’d received. He teleported up to three times in a second, appearing first from the back, then from the side, and lastly from the front, and firing magic bullets. It bounced, soared to the sky, circled, and descended. They clutched and tore into the distance, unleashing mighty attacks, one after another, with no breaks, no misses. The battle was nearing its apophysis.

Airemilme had reached her limit, her movements slowed and her attacks weakened. Ronnie sensed this and moved toward her as she hovered in the air and in one blow dropped her to the ground, breaking her spine, and killed her for the first time. When she revived, there was no chance to break the distance. He grabbed her and snapped her neck. On her third rebirth, Airemilme threw Ronnie back a few feet and again raised the magical waves of the “darkness” and “blood” element around her and mixed them together. She released the resulting energy in a fresh attack, growling, screaming, and not wanting to lose. Ronnie released a blue magic beam in opposition. Their magic collided. There was an explosion. The bridge cracked and collapsed.

Illyseh squinted and tried to see who had won through the gray smoke. Twenty seconds later, he saw that there was no trace of Airemilme, and a little farther away Ronnie had fallen, exhausted and tired.

The storm was over. The wind stopped. Illyseh was free when the black rods vanished. He ran to his comrade and concentrated his magic in his palms and made an analysis.

“You’re all right, boy, you’re all right,” he said, and he saw a sense of satisfaction, pride, and a faint smile on Ronnie’s face. “Why did you let creature live?”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but in him I felt a great palette of emotions, faith in me. And more so, I wouldn’t have gotten any experience from him, anyway.”

The gate to the castle opened ajar. From the purple pool of blood emerged Airemilme, this time without swords or armor. She said:

“They recognized your authority, human creature. They have risen to defend you. You are now a full-fledged keeper of the amulet. But the time to rest has not come. Now it is time to test you, priest.”